Lost in winter.

Winter with its
tangible music,
a quiet
that enthrones
the Earth,

winter with its
material soul,
cutting
as a moonshard,
dreamlike
as despair.

We love hard,
sleep long
and believe in
slow-dancing green
births and the
crocus that
never learned
how to die.

Here in the brief
ice storm of our
endlessness,
we all sail toward
the same harbor,
our maps the only
difference,

each of us singular
snow art in
a unified blizzard—

separation a farce,

though it groans
heavy-laden
as these Virginia
pines . . .

an illusion for the ages,

not sanity or madness,
just us being
something new for
a minute.

Now meet me in
the real world where
we began,

just over the pasture
of crushed opal
and calm,

just one more star
to the north,

just a few
dreams
before dawn.


Patricia Joan Jones